NASCAR TV ratings are in for Charlotte, and fans are angry for one big reason

When the TV ratings were released for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series playoff race at Charlotte, they came with one big caveat and a health warning.

The Round of 12 elimination provided a one-sided beatdown up front as New Zealander Shane van Gisbergen continued his 2025 road course domination with another easy win.

Behind SvG, a long way behind, we did get some very late drama - on the last lap to be exact - when Denny Hamlin’s pass on Ross Chastain inadvertently sent his big title rival Joey Logano through to the next stage.

The overall impact of the race though was underwhelming, with Dale Earnhardt Jr saying all that late drama was just ‘meh’, while Hamlin claims it is time for NASCAR to move on from using the Roval in playoff action.

The TV verdict arrived early this week, and it showed a significant fall in ratings from 2024 - down by pretty much a third. Sunday drew in 1.544m fans while 2024 had delivered 2.419m.

Now there is one major caveat to those two numbers - last year’s race aired on NBC while the 2025 version was broadcast by USA network as part of the new NASCAR rights deal kicking in.

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Fans claim only NASCAR is to blame

Fans on social media did not want to hear that caveat/excuse for one very big reason though - pointing out it was NASCAR that agreed to that rights deal, a $7.7billion pact which runs through 2031.

The claim was NASCAR went for the bigger dollar number, but in the process lost valuable time on the way bigger NBC (only four races air in 2025) and therefore a ton of eyeballs. So effectively ‘your fault, don’t try to tell us any different’.

Some of those fan responses included the following brutal takes:

“NASCAR absolutely shot themself in the foot with this TV deal. Money man France only cares about the dollars and not about growing the sport… every race should be Fox/NBC network tv plus a commercial free streaming option on Prime. But nah Money Man France just took the money”

“This is why NASCAR has a huge viewership problem, it is a direct comparison of the same race. Until they quit with the self inflicted excuses it will never change.”

“NASCAR agreed to the deal it's their fault.”

“I completely agree. I don't think this is discussed enough. @NASCAR has one of the worst TV deals simply because of the fact that so many of their races are on a dieing medium. So what you want about IndyCar but they were smart to leave money on the table”

“USA is never going to get the ratings of the main broadcast channel. Might be a big clue in why ratings are so low too. They had freaking horse racing on NBC lol last week.”

“FOUR. That’s all…. What a great TV deal… sold the sport out and now they’ll never recover.”

Hamlin also out on NASCAR TV rights deal

These responses echo the recent comments of superstar driver Denny Hamlin, who for context purposes also happens to be in the midst of a huge court battle vs NASCAR, along with fellow 23XI Racing co-owner Michael Jordan.

He said: “We obviously lost a significant amount of network races in this TV deal. You know, in each one of the TV deals that we’ve signed over the last few years, or the past few agreements that we’ve had, we’ve always just taken the most amount of money. You know what I mean?

"It’s not been about what’s going to put us in the most households. You know, we were guinea pigs to get channel X off the ground, channel Y off the ground.”

This weekend the playoffs head for Las Vegas, with Sunday’s Cup Series Round of 8 playoff opener airing on USA network at 7.30pm ET on Sunday.

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